"Thoughtless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her cold hands on my shoulders, and look mischievously: 'Why, what's this, brother? As gloomy as a monk again, I declare!' And I should feel happier then, but still a little earnest, and say, 'Maya, Maya, what a child you are! As thoughtless as a boy. And such a noise you make about the place.' 'Oh, but you're always in the dumps—sitting here moping like a grey owl. You ought to go out and race through the snow, till it whirls up ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... week beforehand. If the little folks think these trees grow up in a night, without labor, they know as little about them as they do about most of the other blessings which rain down on their dear little thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clambering and fussing and tying and untying, such alterations and rearrangements, such agilities in getting up and down and everywhere to tie on tapers and gold balls and glittering things innumerable, to hang airy dolls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... eager, thoughtless young man, turned with disgust from this wretched fare, and throwing the old men some gold, galloped on to enjoy his hunting. In the course of the sport, he was left alone, and encountered a wild boar, ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... importance of his subject, and the regard due to his hearers, engrossed all his concern. Every accent of his voice spoke to the ear, every feature of his face, every motion of his hands, and every gesture, spoke to the eye; so that the most dissipated and thoughtless found their attention arrested, and the dullest and most ignorant could not but understand. He appeared to be devoid of the spirit of sectarianism; his only object seemed to be to "preach ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... her eyes on him as he spoke, and he was almost startled at what he read there; for surely there was a hint of almost womanly suffering in their usually childish depths; and he knew intuitively that this was not the thoughtless, light-hearted girl he had previously ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... advantage. They have stretched credit so far beyond what it would bear that specie proves insufficient to support it. Their most considerable men have drawn out, securing themselves by the losses of the deluded, thoughtless numbers, whose understandings have been overruled by avarice and the hope of making mountains out of mole-hills. Thousands of families will be reduced to beggary. The consternation is inexpressible—the rage beyond description, and the case altogether ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... pages of Bancroft; but his thoughts are so well connected, and so systematically arranged, that to read a single page, is to insure a close study of the whole volume. We would not study him for his style, for although fair, it is not pleasing; we can not glide over his pages in thoughtless ease; but then, at the close of almost every paragraph, one must ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the St. Luke got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey from New York, and during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared for. She thought Edith surprisingly thoughtless to be so much pleased to go. She examined her flat and sinewy form with disapproval when she came in hatted and booted to say good-bye. No wonder nobody married Edith. And the money wouldn't help her either now—she was too old. She had missed her ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... the Lord already has been laid heavily upon you in wholesome chastening for your part in this deplorable affair. And the same omnipotent hand has been stretched forth to prevent the baneful effects of your thoughtless conduct. We do not condemn you, my son. It was the work of the Evil One, who has ever found through your weaknesses ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... great measure the fault of artists themselves if they suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughly well-intended, patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity, to deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it by thoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real power would do only what he knew to be worthy ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... have been a little thoughtless," he said sweetly, "but our subordinates should attend to these matters; that is what ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... the garret bedroom, scribbling as fast as pen could fly over paper. He had been guilty of a mistake—so ran the epistle; having decided to leave Whitelaw, he ought never to have requested a continuance of the pension. He begged Lady Whitelaw would forgive this thoughtless impropriety; she had made him understand the full extent of his error. Of course he could not accept anything more from her. As for the past, it would be idle for him to attempt an expression of his indebtedness. But for ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... matter. I cannot quite understand their motive; boys are thoughtless, and perhaps their intentions were good. I know they will be extremely sorry at the result of their visit. If you come with me to the housekeeper she will give you some good, strong soup for your husband. I will come and see him myself the first ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... on their wedding-day, the wife would thenceforth rule the roast; with many other curious and unquestionable facts of the same nature, all which made me ponder more than ever upon the perils which surround this happy state, and the thoughtless ignorance of mortals as to the awful risks they run in entering upon it. I abstain, however, from enlarging upon this topic, having no inclination to promote ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... make a deep impression on the minds of, our brave seamen, not to suffer themselves to be led astray from the straightforward line of their duty, either by order or persuasion of some hot-brained, thoughtless, or designing person, whether their superior or equal, but to remain faithful, under all circumstances, to their commanding officer, as any mutinous proceedings or disobedience of his orders are sure to be visited upon them in the long run, either by loss of life, or by a ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... ought to be, expresses what I have striven for all through my literary life—never to allow it to be patronized, or tolerated, or treated like a good or a bad child. I am always animated by the hope of leaving it a little better understood by the thoughtless than I found it."—To James B. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Island, and climbs down on the face of the precipice to the "Chair," a niche where a school-teacher used to sit as long ago as 1848. She was sitting there one day when a wave came up and washed her away into the ocean. She disappeared. But she who loses her life shall save it. That one thoughtless act of hers did more for her reputation than years of faithful teaching, than all her beauty, grace, and attractions. Her "Chair" is a point of pilgrimage. The tourist looks at it, guesses at its height above the water, regards the hungry sea with aversion, re-enacts the drama in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as Cowperwood and his own attitude toward life was concerned, at this time—the feeling he had—"to satisfy myself"—when combined with his love of beauty and love and women, still made him ruthless and thoughtless. Even now, the beauty and delight of a girl like Aileen Butler were far more important to him than the good-will of fifty million people, if he could evade the necessity of having their good-will. Previous ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... impatiently, "but Tamara! Where can she be? The earth is full of giants, and I am full of fears. I cannot rest, I must go and seek her, and you must come too. She is so beautiful, and so thoughtless ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... office of the teeth; and also that of checking them from eating too much. When food is not properly masticated, the stomach is longer before it feels satisfied; which is perhaps the most frequent, and certainly the most excusable cause of eating more than is fairly sufficient. Thoughtless people will often, for their own amusement, give children morsels of high dishes, and sips of spirituous or fermented liquors, to see whether they will relish them, or make faces at them. But trifling as this may seem, it would be better that it were never practised, for the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Lord's match was over. Since the match Scaife had spent two nights in London, whetting an inordinate appetite for forbidden fruit; exciting in Desmond also, not an appetite for the fruit itself, but for the mad excitement of a perilous adventure. Then, when the thoughtless "I'd like a lark of that sort" had been spoken, came the derisive answer, "You haven't the nerve for it." And then again the subtle leading of an ardent and self-willed nature into the morass, Scaife pretending to dissuade a friend, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Louis Saint-Gaudens He stands, utterly thoughtless, with his double pipes - passing the hours in amusement; we see him at a ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... to me as one of that grave and rigid number, (though without one grain of their formalities, and I hope age, which renders us less gallant, and more envious of the joys and liberties of youth, will never reduce me to so dull and thoughtless a Member of State) yet I have so small and single a portion of their power, that I am ashamed of my incapacity of serving you in this great affair. I bear the honour and the name, it is true, of glorious sway; but I can boast but of the ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... wreck. My good, brave wife sat in the first compartment of the boat; next her was Franz, nearly eight years old. Then came Fritz, a spirited young fellow of fifteen; the two center tubs contained the valuable cargo; then came our bold, thoughtless Jack; next him Ernest, my second son, intelligent, well-formed, and rather indolent. I myself stood in the stern, endeavoring to guide the raft with its precious burden to a safe ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... development of human intelligence; and Tyndall, who reduced the religious consciousness to an emotional experience of mystery, are typical of the one attitude. The other is well exhibited in Schelling's reference to "the blind and thoughtless mode of investigating nature which has become generally established since the corruption of philosophy by Bacon, and of physics by Boyle." Dogmatic experimentalism and dogmatic idealism signify more or less consistently the abstract isolation of ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... expand; Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe[eg]: Such be our fate when we return to land! Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand[eh] Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love; A circle there of merry listeners stand Or to some well-known measure featly move, Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... a Mouse" seem by report to have been composed while Burns was actually plowing. One of the poet's first editors wrote: "John Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years afterward, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse. Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... a man of intellect and some culture, he could not, like his more ignorant confreres, imagine that one man or one small group of men, was responsible for these. Earnest thought and reflection told him that if any section of society suffered, then society at large was guilty: all the thoughtless, all the indifferent members of society were equally responsible for its abuses. Now this may be true enough theoretically, but no one but a fanatic or a madman would carry the reasoning farther to the point of saying: "Society at large is guilty; society at large must suffer. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... The curious foreigner pokes, a human raven, over the scenes of carnage. Disjointed household organizations rearrange themselves. The railway trains once more run regularly. Laughter, clinking of glasses, and smirking loiterers on the boulevards testify that thoughtless, heartless Paris is itself once ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... his mind must have been immense, for Robespierre was not a thoughtless, wild fanatic, carried by the multitude whether they pleased: he led the people of Paris, and led them with a fixed object. He was progressing by one measure deeply calculated to the age of reason, which he was assured was coming; ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... don't know where it is—or where it was. Ah, misery, misery!" He wrings his hands in despair and staggers in the middle of the medley of plaster and bricks. Then, bewildered by this encumbered plain of lost landmarks, he looks questioningly about in the air, like a thoughtless child, like a madman. He is looking for the intimacy of the bedrooms scattered in infinite space, for their inner form and their twilight now ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is that of achievement. In every human being there is the desire to rise to something great. The most thoughtless boy on the street looks serious as the Presidential carriage rolls past. In the deep recesses of his nature there is kindled by the spectacle a momentary yearning for fame—he would like to be President some ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... To illustrate the latter case, let us take this proposition, of which the subject only is an abstract name, "Thoughtlessness is dangerous." Thoughtlessness is an attribute, grounded on the facts which we call thoughtless actions; and the proposition is equivalent to this, Thoughtless actions are dangerous. In the next example the predicate as well as the subject are abstract names: "Whiteness is a color;" or "The color of snow is a whiteness." These ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... these evils might have been mitigated, if not fully removed, had each generation of masters done but a small part of its duty in the way of amelioration. But it was not of such things that they were thinking. The thoughtless cruelty in the ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... you can't, and you shan't. It was thoughtless of me to think that speech would be a relief. Lie down on your bed, dear, and have a good rest, and you will ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... are we rewarding them? All over America they are hunted and killed. Five million birds must be caught every year for American women to wear in their hats and bonnets. Just think of it, girls. Isn't it dreadful? Five million innocent, hard-working, beautiful birds killed, that thoughtless girls and women may ornament themselves with their little dead bodies. One million bobolinks have been killed in one month near Philadelphia. Seventy song-birds were sent from one Long Island ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... with patience the exile of this life. It was also the echo of my inmost thoughts. In truth I had long known that the Lord is more tender than a mother, and I have sounded the depths of more than one mother's heart. I know that a mother is ever ready to forgive her child's small thoughtless faults. How often have I not had this sweet experience! No reproach could have touched me more than one single kiss from my Mother. My nature is such that fear makes me shrink, while, under love's sweet rule, I not ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... if I'm odious to you, son, Because I'm not subservient to your humor In all things, right or wrong; away with care! Spend, squander, and do what you will!—but if, In those affairs where youth has made you blind, Eager, and thoughtless, you will suffer me To counsel and correct—and in due season Indulge you—I ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Miss Pottinger before the house, the question "What is to be done?" had singularly lapsed, nor had it been referred to again by either. The young lady had apparently thrown herself into the diversions of the camp with the thoughtless gayety of a brief holiday maker, and it was not for him to remind her—even had he wished to—that her important question had never been answered. He had enjoyed her happiness with the relief of a secret shared by ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... before her eyes, blurring the spots, on the cards, the blackness of despair crowding upon each flash. Let him beware! With a word she could shatter his dream; ay, and so she would. What! sit there and let him turn the knife in her heart and receive the pain meekly? No! It was the thoughtless brutality with which he went about this new affair that bit so poignantly. To show her, so indurately, that she was nothing, that, despite her magnificent sacrifice, she had never been more than a convenience, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... challenged the impertinent wag to settle the matter as became gentlemen. The duel, however, ended quite as harmlessly as the blowing-up convention of which Mr. Colonel Frank Jones was a delegate, the seconds-thoughtless wretches-having forgot to put bullets ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... mingled in scenes of sociality with smugglers, and enjoyed the pleasure of a silent walk, under the moon, with the young and the beautiful. At Irvine he laboured by day to acquire a knowledge of his business, and at night he associated with the gay and the thoughtless, with whom he learnt to empty his glass, and indulge in free discourse on topics forbidden at Lochlea. He had one small room for a lodging, for which he gave a shilling a week: meat he seldom tasted, and his food ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... people in a country are those who educate its inhabitants. Others have most of the present in their hands: those who educate have all the future. With the present is bound up all the happiness only of the utterly selfish and the thoughtless among mankind; on the future rest all the thoughts of every parent and every wise ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... suggested to the monks that its presence was hardly in accordance with the severe aspect of the establishment. There was some mystery connected with it of which I am still ignorant, as I never ask questions; but it is at the least ill-judged and thoughtless on the part of "maids of all work" to engage themselves to any situation where the kissing of a rock, or a holy effigy, may lead to complications. It was of no use to moralise; Christina was gone, together with the child; there was absolute quiet in the monastery; neither the scolding ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... him in! Bring him in, Miss Thoughtless! Don't keep him there a-philandering when there's good ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... Thoughtless or hardened Sinners may be deaf to these Calls; and Little Philosophers, who see a little, and but very little into natural Causes, may think they see enough to account for what happens, without calling in ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... a very thoughtless person," she said quietly. "Not only would it be impossible for me to do that, but there must not be a word about our engagement. Remember that I have given false information about you. It is not the risk for myself that I ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vain to put wealth within the reach of him who will not stretch out his hand to take it. King soon found a friend, as idle and thoughtless as himself, in Upton, one of the judges, who had a pleasant house called Mountown, near Dublin, to which King frequently retired; delighting to neglect his interest, forget his cares, and desert ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while it dazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the gentler hearts that beat beneath the embroidery, with a placid sensation of luxurious benevolence—as if by all that they wore in waywardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, and aid to the indigent; ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... look, my darling," Thorne murmured, speaking softly and keeping a tight rein over himself. "Your eyes are like a startled fawn's. Have I been too abrupt—too thoughtless and inconsiderate? You would forgive me, love, if you knew how I have longed for you; have yearned for this meeting as Dives yearned for water—as the condemned yearn for reprieve. Have you no smile for me, sweetheart?—no word of welcome for the man whose heaven ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... has changed. The imagination of the savage seems powerful because his other faculties are weak. In the absence of knowledge it cuts the most astonishing capers, just as a bird would if it were suddenly deprived of sight. Now the savage is a mental child, and the ignorant and thoughtless are mental savages. They credit the absurdest stories, and indulge in the most ridiculous speculations. When religion ministers to their weakness, as it always does, they gravely discuss the most astonishing puerilities. Indeed, the history of religious thought—that is, of the infantile vagaries ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... few are better than the unwinnowed many as rulers. She would sooner have a mathematical school-teacher as finance minister than a saloon keeper or ward heeler. She believes that the rule of the select few is better than the rule of the thoughtless many. She delegates the right and power to rule to those few, lets them make the laws and bows to the laws as to the laws of God, as the best possible for the nation because they have been enacted by the best of her nation. If that best be bad, it is at least not so bad ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... too many things for granted. You should not assume that your thoughtless word, or harsh manner, or forgetfulness of little and delicate attentions will have no effect, and will be duly passed by as unmeaning. No such thing! Every word or look which is incompatible with genuine ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst
... had been at Oxford," replied Edward, a little nonplussed by this reference to one whose memory even the most selfish and thoughtless must have held ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... go through fire and water for us. I seem, as you say, to be ruining myself; and yet Paz keeps the house with such method and economy that he has even repaired some of my foolish losses at play,—the thoughtless folly of a young man. My dear, Thaddeus is as shrewd as two Genoese, as eager for gain as a Polish Jew, and provident as a good housekeeper. I never could force him to live as I did when I was a bachelor. Sometimes I had to use a sort of friendly coercion to make him go to ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... the feeling of the English coming in, is fostered and encouraged by the articles in French and neutral newspapers that are smuggled in. I do not anticipate any uprising among the Belgians, although the thoughtless among them have encouraged it. An uprising is not a topic of worry in our councils. It could do us no harm. We would crush it out like that," and von Bissing snapped his thin fingers, "but if only for the sake of these misled and betrayed ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... her character was seriously affected; but it was not pleasant to have such things said. Her cousin did not mean to be unkind. On the contrary, she had taken rather a fancy to Gypsy. She was simply a little thoughtless and a little vain. Joy is not the only girl in Boston, I am afraid, who has hurt the feelings of her country visitors ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... trading-posts is carried on in their skins; every year the Indian villages make new lodges, for which the skin of the buffalo furnishes the material; and in that portion of the country where they are still found, the Indians derive their entire support from them, and slaughter them with a thoughtless and abominable extravagance. Like the Indians themselves, they have been a characteristic of the Great West; and as, like them, they are visibly diminishing, it will be interesting to throw a glance backward ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... weeping friends begged the youths to repent and stay at home where their duty lay, but pleas and cries were all counteracted by applause and encouragement from thoughtless enthusiasts, and after religious exercises in which God's blessing was asked, and the oriflammes and crosses raised triumphantly, the army formed in line of march, and then with a volume of cheers which drowned the sound of sobs and protests, moved on, out of Vendome ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... less brilliant lane of blanched snow. The L trains crept along like huge fire-eyed serpents. The hum of the ceaseless moving line of motor cars drifted upward faintly, almost drowned in the rising clamor of the street. Broadway's gay and thoughtless crowds surged to and fro, from that height merely a thick stream of black figures, like contending columns of ants on the march. And everywhere the monstrous electric signs flared up vivid in white and red and green; and dimmed and paled, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... of the voyage was the difficulty experienced in getting proper provisions at many places. Numbers of people were either thoughtless, or they looked on Boyton as an uncanny sort of creature, whom they did not care to have about. When he did get food, it consisted of pie, which seemed to be the staff of life with most of the country ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... betraying; and the neat folds of her pretty grey dress, which had lain so still over her bosom when she was drawing, began to rise and fall gently now, when Zack was holding her hand. If young Thorpe had not been the most thoughtless of human beings—as much a boy still, in many respects, as when he was locked up in his father's dressing-room for bad behavior at church—he might have guessed long ago why he was the only one of Madonna's old friends whom she did not permit to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... impenetrable, unyielding walls to the sea. Its "titanic ambition for quiet flowing" down this beautiful, gently sloping valley to the gulf (which, as one has said, "has been its longing through ages") will have been turned to human ministry. The spirit of the great water will have become as patient, as thoughtless of its own wild comfort or ambitions as that of the priest who dedicated it to the honor of the mother of the most ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... what Rosamund had evidently made up her mind to do, was beginning to do. Dion compared her with many of the woman of London who have children and who, nevertheless, continue to lead haphazard, frivolous, utterly thoughtless lives, caring apparently little more for the moral welfare of their children than for the moral welfare of their Pekinese. Mrs. Clarke had a hatred of "things with wings growing out of their shoulders." ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... his teeth, to guess at his age. The anatomist will, in thought, dissect him into parts and see every bone, sinew, cartilage, blood vessel, his stomach, lungs, liver, heart, entrails; every part will be laid open; and while the thoughtless urchin sees a single object—a white horse—others will, at a single glance, read volumes of instruction. Oh! the importance of knowledge! how little is it regarded! What funds of instruction might be gathered from the lessons every where ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... without guidance or protection, she allowed the fact, admitting that guidance would be good for her. When he went on to say that Linda also was in need of protection, she admitted that also. "She is in sore need," Madame Staubach said, "the poor thoughtless child." And when Herr Steinmarc spoke of her pecuniary condition, reminding the widow that were she left without the lodger the two women could hardly keep the old family roof over their head, Madame Staubach acknowledged it all, and perhaps ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... can be said pro and con concerning the usefulness of birds in general there remains no doubt, in the minds of thinking people at least, as to the value of these creatures. It is only the vicious, biased, and thoughtless persons who continue ruthlessly to destroy birds indiscriminately without first pausing to consider whether or not it is a proper thing to do, whether it is right ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... must place yourselves in the situation of Weems and Killroy—consider yourselves as knowing that the prejudice of the world about you thought you came to dragoon them into obedience, to statutes, instructions, mandates, and edicts, which they thoroughly detested—that many of these people were thoughtless and inconsiderate, old and young, sailors and landsmen, negroes and mulattoes—that they, the soldiers, had no friends about them, the rest were in opposition to them; with all the bells ringing to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... And he asked her if she didn't think the time was come for beginning to take this dear place towards the children. Poor Katy! She sobbed as if her heart would break at this, and though she made no promises, I think she was never quite so thoughtless again, after that day. As for the rest, Papa called them together and made them distinctly understand that "Kikeri" was never to be played any more. It was so seldom that Papa forbade any games, however boisterous, that this order really made an impression on the unruly brood, and they never have ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... reading to oneself in a sick room, and reading aloud to the patient any bits which will amuse him or more often the reader, is unaccountably thoughtless. What do you think the patient is thinking of during your gaps of non-reading? Do you think that he amuses himself upon what you have read for precisely the time it pleases you to go on reading to yourself, and that his attention is ready for something else at ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... "A man," said Billy, "must cut a dash once in his lifetime, though the chance don't come till he's dead." . . . Looking back across these years I can smile at the boy I was and forgive his poor brave flourish. But his speech was thoughtless: the woman (ah! but he knows her better now) was withdrawn with its wound in her heart: and between them Death was stepping forward to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... dismay Kala rushed headlong to its side, thoughtless now of the danger from Kerchak; but when she gathered the wee, mangled form to her bosom ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shall tell you a story. Some twenty-five years ago—it may be thirty; how time slides away!—I knew a boy who had one of the kindest of mothers, but whose father had died before his recollection. I think—indeed I know—he loved his mother, though he was sometimes thoughtless, and once in a while disobedient. One day, in midsummer, when the blackberries were ripe in the woods, and the trout were sporting merrily in the brook, Charles—for that was the name of the boy—came running to his mother, all out of breath, and said ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... the Church, in as fast a walk as he could possibly assume; proceeded about half down the aisle, and popped himself down in his seat as quick as if he had been shot. The more thoughtless of the congregation began to titter, and the graver peeped up slily, but ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... met Marthasa's family. His wife was a woman of considerable beauty even by Terran standards, but there was a sharpness in her manner and a sense of coldness in the small black eyes that repelled Cameron and Joyce even as the thoughtless actions of ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... not a thoughtless or inattentive child; on the contrary he observed on his way to, and from School, and when he walked out with his Papa, everything that ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... thoughtless attempts at interference, Rammer," he said, "there will be no trouble." He was speaking with the restraint of a man who is in a state of cold fury. "You're endangering us all. You must realize that you have no understanding of what you ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... second thoughts, how unreasonable it was of him to expect to take up Robin's time like that. He must fall into the ways of the house, quietly, unobtrusively, with none of that jolting of other people's habits and regular customs; it had been thoughtless, of him and ridiculous. He must be ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... unnatural one. So long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate—they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life—a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence—a thoughtless, inactive being—that she has too often come to the same conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high destination, in the meridian of her glory. We have but little sympathy or patience for those who ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... gates, the followers of the one mingling fraternally with the followers of the other. As if the deities of the wonderful temples they were approaching wished to show the futility of man's foresight, a thoughtless remark made by one of the least in the ambassador's retinue to one of the least who followed the Baalbek general, wrought ruin to one empire, and saved another ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... me, because of my natural clumsiness. The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life's "experiences"—are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... talking about herself; thoughtful about the very pins and ribands of my wife's dress, about the making of a doll's cap for a child,—but of herself, save only as regarded her ripening in all goodness, wholly thoughtless; enjoying everything lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether in God's works or man's, with the keenest relish; inheriting the earth to the very fulness of the promise, though never leaving her crib, nor changing her posture; and preserved through the very valley of the ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... in artistically elaborated descriptions of my project, for fear of incurring the suspicion of painting a Utopia. I anticipate, in any case, that thoughtless scoffers will caricature my sketch and thus try to weaken its effect. A Jew, intelligent in other respects, to whom I explained my plan, was of the opinion that "a Utopia was a project whose future details were represented as already extant." ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... ahead is this same party spirit, this wild and thoughtless frenzy in matters where unbiased judgment is most of all necessary. It is a rock upon which we have split before; it has taken us many years to recover from the shock, and now we are in danger of altogether losing our political life upon ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... man whose head was at this time entirely full of gigs, and tandems, and unicorns: business was his aversion; pleasure was his business. Money he considered only as the means of pleasure; and tenants only as machines, who make money. He was neither avaricious nor cruel; but thoughtless and extravagant. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... place is here. An hour ago you were but a thoughtless boy; now you must learn to be a man.—Senor, you have brought news? You have come to announce the death of my husband; ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... disturber of the public quiet. O, thou whom my soul loveth, wherefore dost thou sit dejected, and hidest thy face all the day long? Canst thou ask the reason of my grief? See, see, my generous hardy sons are become foolish, indolent, effeminate, thoughtless; behold, how with their own hands they have loaded me with shackles: alas! hast thou not seen them take the rod from my beloved sister, Justice, and give it to the sons of blood and rapine? Yet a little while I mourn over lost and degenerate sons, and ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that she was much in her room, and that she went out more for exercise than from the motive of getting through with the weary, idle hours. For some reason she also gained such an influence over thoughtless Belle that the latter took tolerably good care of little Fred and Minnie, as the children were familiarly called. While she maintained toward him her polite and friendly manner, he saw that he was ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... there was a very wealthy widow who lived in a marble cottage approached by a driveway of the same stone, bordered with rhododendrons. She had an only son, Jack—a giddy, thoughtless boy, but very kindhearted, as many a hard-working chorus girl had reason to remember. Jack was an idle fellow, whose single accomplishment was driving an automobile, in which he displayed remarkable ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... out his arms and tried to take her, cursing himself for his thoughtless cruelty. Infinite pity and something else—fervent, hungry desire to clasp her overmastered all the prudence of the past. But she eluded him. She sprang away. She retreated to the upper step of the church porch, and he ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... temptation to include Masdevallia, because that genus is not so perfectly easy as the rest; but if it be added, nine-tenths, assuredly, of the plants in our cool house come from the West. Among the special merits of the Oncidium is its colour. I have heard thoughtless persons complain that they are "all yellow;" which, as a statement of fact, is near enough to the truth, for about three-fourths may be so described roughly. But this dispensation is another proof of ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... steward with some more dishes, or of the cupbearer with a fresh supply of rich wine, the guests would look sad and blank, and the sparks of gayety kindled by the light jest or the cheerful discourse, were quenched in the damp of melancholy recollections. The bride was the most thoughtless, and consequently the most cheerful person present; but even she, at moments, felt it unnatural to be sitting at the head of the table, decked out in her wreath of green and her embroidery of gold, while Undine's corpse was lying cold and stiff in the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... so,—how had he overlooked it? His unbelief had come from a thoughtless, ignorant, one-sided view of life and human things. The disorder and ruin which he saw, where he did not also see the adjusting hand at work, had led him to refuse his credit to the Supreme Fabricator. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the mails being conveyed by mules and such species of horses as are a disgrace to any service." This is evidence from within the Post Office itself. While young boys were suited for the work in some respects, they were thoughtless and unpunctual; yet when older men were employed they frequently got into liquor, and thus endangered the mails. The records of the service are full of the troubles arising from the conduct of these servants. ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... something to be said for your reference to the Carmagnole. We are passing through a phase of Revolution, very natural after a great upheaval. The sense of freedom—the very thing for which we have been fighting—is apt to turn the heads of the young and thoughtless. There is a spirit of rebellion in the air, which at its worst takes the form of Bolshevism, but here is seen in a relatively harmless shape as a general revolt against social restriction, a general passion for what is known as 'a good time.' In any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... a long way in his course by that time. So many of the folds of the thin net had been thrown over the little thoughtless victim, that, light-hearted and defiant though he was by nature, he had begun to experience a sense of restraint which ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... season begins, the Apiary must be closely watched almost every day, or some of the new swarms will be lost. If this business is entrusted to thoughtless children, or careless adults, many swarms will be lost by their neglect. It is very evident that but few persons who keep bees, can always be on hand to watch them and to hive the new swarms. But, in the height of the swarming season, if any considerable number of colonies is kept, the Apiarian, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... I should always have done as much; besides, I was crippled everywhere, not merely by want of power as a priest, but by having made myself such a shallow, thoughtless ass. But that was not what I wanted to say. It was about ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wished, mischievously, to put him in the wrong, and that a thoughtless or insulting word on his part, should serve as a justification for the insult ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... crawled across the plains to the doors of the settlement and housed itself at Fort O'Call, Silver Tassel acted badly, however, and sowed fault-finding among the thoughtless ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... oughtn't we to hide it from the world, uncle? He is only a boy, and it will spoil his whole life. I'd give the money, I say, a dozen times over sooner than he should be punished. Boys are stupid and thoughtless, uncle; they often do things in haste that they would not do if they considered first, and such a little thing ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... this Diary we should read between the lines and detect as it were in its general flavor any taint of disingenuousness or concealment; we should discern moral unwholesomeness in its atmosphere. A thoughtless sentence would slip from the pen, a sophistical argument would be (p. 165) formulated for self-comfort, some acquaintance, interview, or arrangement would slide upon some unguarded page indicative of undisclosed matters. But there is absolutely nothing of this sort. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the steward a regular (p. 243) seaman's look. He also suggested that petty officer uniforms for stewards be regularized. At one poignant moment this lonely officer took on the whole service, trying to change singlehandedly a thoughtless habit that demeaned both blacks and whites. He admonished the service: "refrain from the use of 'Boy' in addressing Stewards. This has been a constant practice in the Service and is most objectionable, is in bad taste, shows ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr. |
